every year hundreds of people go missing under baffling conditions in national parks and forests all across north america one former police detective named david politis has begun investigating thousands of these very strange disappearances and he outlines his findings in a book series called missing 4-1-1 today i'm going to be looking at three cases that all fall within the missing 4-1-1 phenomenon where everybody involved claims to have been chased by someone or something out in the middle of nowhere but before we get into today's stories if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered
in story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three four even five times every week so if that's of interest to you please give the like button a gift card to their favorite restaurant but don't load any money onto it also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's stories [Music] in 1989 22 year old eloise lindsay was a fresh college graduate and she was at a crossroads in her life because
even though she just earned her degree she really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life and because she was an experienced backpacker she thought a good way to you know kind of get her life together would be to go on a sort of retreat go out into the woods go out into nature and kind of find herself so she had planned this very detailed 43.3 mile hike along the appalachian trail starting in south carolina where the first seven days of the hike she would be totally on her own and then at the
seven day mark she would meet up with a friend at a particular rendezvous point her friend would give her resupplies and would be her companion for the rest of the hike when eloise told her parents what her plans were they were not concerned for her safety because she was an experienced backpacker she had made trips like this before and so they said great we'll see you when you get back so on november 4th eloise sets out to begin her journey down the appalachian trail and the first couple of days of her hike were great the
weather was beautiful the scenery was amazing and she had all this time to just kind of be by herself and look internal and think hard about what she wanted to do with her life but on the third day when she woke up she was sleeping inside of a tent she had camped just off the trail she woke up and she had this intense sense of dread she couldn't really place where it was coming from but she knew something was wrong and she's kind of doing inventory of her life like what did i forget is is
there something that i'm just not thinking about right now but she kind of pushes it aside mentally and thinks okay you know what i'm just gonna pack up my campsite here and get hiking and i'm bound to you know come up with what it is that's making me feel this way so she gets out of her tent and she begins packing up her campsite and she's looking out kind of scanning the tree line not because she was looking for anything but just because she happened to be looking out and she could have sworn that she
saw a man standing you know 30 40 feet away behind a tree and she kind of did a double take and was staring at him it's you know it's broad daylight it's the morning and they're near a trail so what is it like unbelievable that there might be someone near her at that very moment but she kind of did a double take and she looked at them again and this person was gone and she stood there for a minute just kind of looking in the direction of where she had seen this guy wondering you know
is my mind playing tricks on me did i really see someone there you know why aren't they showing themselves again if if there was someone there they clearly must have just been looking at me why aren't they you know poking their heads out again to communicate with me in some way we're out in the middle of nowhere we should be talking to each other but the guy never shows himself again and so as she's standing there wondering what she should do she isn't ready to yell out to this person because there's part of her that's
a little bit nervous about yelling out to some stranger in the middle of the woods but she starts to get this really intense feeling that she's being watched and it feels an awful lot like the sense of dread she had while she was in the tent and she's starting to wonder you know are my instincts or is my sixth sense picking up that i'm being watched like there's some predator out there looking at me right now and even though she has no way of knowing if that's actually true she's alone in the middle of the
woods and even though she's experienced she can't help but feel really vulnerable and because this guy is just not showing himself again she feels a little bit threatened and so she begins to panic and she starts packing up all of her stuff as quickly as she can and as soon as she can she takes off down the trail away from that guy she saw in the woods as she was walking down this trail she couldn't help but think someone was right behind her she kept turning around to see if this person or whoever it was
was behind her and no one was ever there but this visceral feeling that she was being watched that sense of dread she had it just was not going away and so she started walking faster and faster before long she was running and she's realizing that she's in a section of the appalachian trail that's very remote she's not near civilization she's not near her next rendezvous point and so she's thinking to herself i need to get off this trail i need to get to a road i need to get away from here as soon as i
possibly can and so her options were to continue on this trail for several miles and it would probably take her until well into the night before she was gonna reach civilization or she could take a shortcut because she believed there was a road that was running parallel to her trail but it was way down the mountain it would require leaving the trail and basically cutting through the wilderness to get down to this road but she was pretty confident it was right down there and because this threat of this person or thing following her was so
intense for her she decided to leave the trail she couldn't stand the idea of having to spend another night out in the middle of the woods with this person stalking her and so she walks up the trail and starts running down the mountain it wasn't long before she started to hear audible sounds coming from what she believed to be this person that was following her and she would turn around and there'd be no one there and then she started to walk you know trying to listen as she's walking and she would hear footsteps far away
from her and she turned and there'd be nobody there but she was certain someone was following her someone was stalking her and the sounds that were coming out of this person this animal whatever it was they sounded like you know a deep male voice but you couldn't recognize if it was a language of some kind it just sounded more like a grunt or or a yell of some kind and so her heart rate's elevated she's panicking and she's walking as fast as she can just through the middle of the wilderness hoping she's walking towards this
road but after walking and running for miles into the middle of nowhere she has not come to a road it's now completely dark out and she knows she's lost and so she has to set up camp in the middle of nowhere and she knows somewhere out in the middle of the woods is some person or something that is stalking me and she's all alone she has no way to contact anyone she doesn't have a cell phone it's 1989 and so she sets up her campsite and she gets in her tent she zips it up and
she lays there hoping she doesn't hear any sounds and sure enough within minutes of being inside of that tent she starts hearing those audible sounds coming from somewhere in the forest and she hears what sounds like heavy footsteps walking around the perimeter of her campsite all night long she hears this but luckily they don't come up right to her tent so there's some separation between her and whatever is making these sounds and then finally you know the sun comes up she is out of that tent packs it up and continues running in the direction she
hopes is the road and of course all day long she has that sense that someone is watching her she's hearing footsteps coming from behind her she would turn she doesn't see anything she would hear that audible grunting sound that that low voice coming from somewhere behind her but again she would never see whoever it was or whatever it was that was making the sound and then again the sun is starting to set and she has not found the road she hasn't found a trail and she's thinking to herself i can't even backtrack because if i
turn around and start walking backwards i'm bound to run into this very thing i'm trying to escape and so once again she sets up her campsite in the middle of nowhere she gets inside and as soon as she's laying in her tent she starts hearing those heavy footsteps somewhere out in the woods kind of walking around the perimeter of her campsite she's hearing that that low audible sound that she can't quite place and at some point she falls asleep she gets up the next morning she jumps out of her tent packs it up and starts
running hopefully in the direction that will bring her to civilization a couple days later when eloise was supposed to meet her friend on the trail at the seven day mark and they were gonna finish the hike together well eloise doesn't show up but after several hours when eloise did not show up her friend left the trail and contacted authorities and filed a missing person report and the police would launch this massive search for eloise along the stretch of the appalachian trail where she had said she would be and for the next 14 days hundreds of
police and volunteers and helicopters are scouring this area and there's no sign of eloise and so after 14 days from the time her friend filed the missing person report the police had to turn the search off and they say look we can't find her two days after the search was terminated so 23 days after eloise had initially set off for her trek through the appalachian trail a hunter that was out in the middle of nowhere near the appalachian trail discovers eloise perched up against the trees she's totally emaciated she's dehydrated she's delirious but she's alive
at first she was terrified of the hunter because she believed the hunter was this person that had been following her but when she realized he was there to help she went with them she was brought back and brought to a hospital and she was checked out and besides being dehydrated and you know emaciated she was okay and she would detail in multiple interviews and in her official statement that she had been chased for the past almost three weeks in the middle of the woods and she doesn't know who it was or why they were chasing
her and then interestingly she said right before she was found so a couple of days before this hunter finds her this person this thing whatever it was that was following her got so close to her a couple different times that she was so scared she ditched her backpack that contained all of her life-saving equipment like her sleeping bag and her tent and it had some food and water in there she ditched that so she could be lighter so she could run faster away from this thing that is chasing her in the woods so you gotta
figure you gotta be at such a high level of fear that you're prepared to ditch the one thing you really require to survive out in the wilderness which was her pack full of supplies and then after she's ditched her pack and she's run for some distance she's got no supplies no food no water she stumbles across this tree in the middle of nowhere that wedged inside the trunk is a cachet of donuts and pound cake and so she takes the donuts and pound cake and between that and the stream water she'd found that's what kept
her alive the last few days before she was found eloise says she has no idea what to make of her experience and law enforcement were baffled by it as well some people think eloise had a mental break and she effectively made this whole situation up that she really was lost in the woods but no one was chasing her and she was just kind of paranoid and running around the wilderness for a couple of weeks other people including park rangers that work that stretch of the appalachian trail believe it's possible she could have been stalked by
wild men which are basically people that live out in the mountains that are effectively feral that live off the land and they've been known according to local legend they've been known to attack park rangers and people that live out in that area have claimed to have seen these wild men and they kind of match the description of what she was describing but as of right now there's no official explanation for what happened to her other than she got lost and was found again on june 7th 1951 two families from santa fe new mexico met up
at the santa fe ski basin to have a picnic together and to enjoy the mountain air during the summer months when there's no snow on the ground the santa fe ski basin is a very popular location for hikers because the terrain is very rugged and if you get up to the top of the basin there's these incredible views overlooking the valley but on this day the two families decided they wanted to have a picnic at the base of the basin basically looking up the mountain as the parents were setting up the picnic site the kids
started playing together and that was larry and janet mcgee who were brother and sister aged seven and five respectively and stephen cross who was three years old after they finished setting up their picnic site they look around and realize the kids are gone and they're thinking we just saw them like two minutes ago so they can't have gone very far and so they start looking around for their kids and they can't find them they're yelling out for them and they're starting to get a little bit more worried and they start branching out farther and farther
and they realize the only other place they could have gone is up into the woods which are very steep and very rugged so they're thinking well they can't have gone into the mountains that would be impossible for these young kids to get very far and they aren't responding to our calls it's possible they could have been abducted and so one of the parents ran down to the main building of the actual ski resort where they kept a staff member in there during the summer months and they were able to get inside and use the phone
and they called authorities so the police come out and they set up these huge spotlights that are aimed up at the mountain and so the idea was if the kids did get up into the mountain somehow they would see these lights and hopefully walk down to them after they set up the spotlights the police began combing the side at the mountain in hopes that the kids were not abducted but despite the spotlights and hundreds of searchers and people yelling out for these kids they never heard back from the kids they didn't find them and so
all night they're looking for them and they're realizing that there's a pretty good chance they're probably not here and that means they probably were abducted and so by the following afternoon things were really starting to look grim there was no sign of these kids anywhere and that's when a searcher who was way outside of the primary search area they were about three and a half miles away thousands of feet up in elevation they're up there and they're looking around and they're getting ready to leave when they see something out of the corner of their eye
that looks like a person they turn around and one of the kids is poking their head up from behind the log and the searchers run over to them and sure enough the three kids were actually inside of this downed log and they were all okay as the searchers are picking them up and calling this in they're thinking to themselves how in the world did these kids get so far away once the children were brought back down to the search headquarters and were reunited with their parents and were checked out by a doctor who said yep
they're a little dehydrated but they're okay after all that was done the police asked them the question that everybody was thinking how did you get where you were found and larry the oldest of the group he was seven years old it took him a minute but eventually he said you know they were playing around the picnic area and they went just barely into the tree line when all of the sudden a bear came out from behind a tree and began chasing them and the three of them ran three and a half miles up a mountain
to find this log which they jumped inside of and they hid inside of this log from this bear which apparently was patrolling the area looking for them and in addition to this bear that was apparently walking around the area looking for them larry said they were especially scared of the gorilla that was walking around the area looking for them as well now it's easy to discount larry in the kid's story because you could say okay well the gorilla they saw was actually just a searcher looking for them except there was no one in that area
looking for the kids near that log until right before they were found it was kind of like a last-ditch effort to push outside the boundaries of the main search area it was just kind of a miracle they actually located them and larry and the kids were saying this gorilla and this bear were looking for them on the first day and first night they were out there so there were no searchers out there at that time as for the bear there have been bear sightings in the santa fe ski basin although it is fairly rare but
if it was a bear that was chasing these kids it would have caught them a bear is not gonna not be able to catch three small children running up hill so either there wasn't a bear or it was some other animal that might have resembled a bear but what type of an animal would chase three small children who are very vulnerable three and a half miles up a mountain only to abandon them but even if we say you know what there's no way the bear and the gorilla had anything to do with this this is
just kids who got lost and they wound up in the woods and they were found and that's it fine but i have a three-year-old and a four-year-old and i can tell you right now there's no way they could cover a three and a half mile distance uphill in really rugged mountainous terrain in a 24 hour cycle there's just there's no way without help that's not possible i would say the only caveat to that would be if my children were fearful for their lives in which case adrenaline would kick in and they probably could cover that
distance in a 24-hour period that certainly lends credibility to the idea that larry janet and steve were in fact running for their lives and they had that adrenaline kick and that's how they were able to cover that distance but were they really running from a bear or a gorilla we don't know and there's been no further investigation into this case and i think that's because the kids were found alive the parents the police they're happy and everybody moved on from 2002 to 2006 cullen finnerty was perhaps the most successful college quarterback in history winning three
national championships and being named the division two player of the decade he was also perhaps the toughest college quarterback in history most quarterbacks will spend their careers looking to avoid getting smashed by defenders not cullen cullen was six foot two 240 pounds and he would tell his teammates that he wanted to get hit and he would hit back and his coaches hated about him but his teammates loved this about him cullen was also famous for playing through injuries his junior year in college he broke his collarbone and he didn't tell anyone and he played through
an entire playoff series that he won after college cullen's professional football career was not nearly as successful as his amateur one he played briefly for two nfl football teams the baltimore ravens and the denver broncos but when he wasn't getting any playing time and he just could see the writing on the wall that this was not gonna be a match he was not gonna make it in the nfl he left for europe to play in the european football league but when his european football career started to sputter out as well around 2009 he came back
to the united states where he joined a very small time indoor arena football league and while cullen's love of football was still there as much as it ever was he knew at this point playing at this low of a level that his career was effectively over around the same time that cullen was hanging up his football cleats he would meet jennifer who would become his wife she was an all-state volleyball player and in many ways was just as competitive and as athletic as cullen was they were kind of like a perfect match for each other
they married in 2010 and cullen this big man big time quarterback was shaking and crying at the altar because he was so nervous and excited about marrying jennifer because i think this was a really big turning point for him where he was basically putting football in the past and starting this new life and building a family with jennifer and he was really excited about it the newlywed couple moved into a house together in michigan where they had two kids and cullen landed a good job in medical sales and by all accounts cullen was just hitting
his stride post-football on memorial day weekend in 2013 jennifer's family was planning this three-day fishing trip along the baldwin river in michigan and the finities decided they would join them and so cullen and his wife and kids they rented a cabin that was going to be near the campsite that jennifer's family was staying at and for the entire weekend it was just this great fishing trip where everybody had a great time and the weather was beautiful and on may 26th so the last night of this three-day fishing trip cullen who had recently purchased this pontoon
boat that they had used for this fishing trip he wanted to just go out one more time on his boat this boat that he was really proud of and fish for another 30 45 minutes before ending the weekend so cullen put on his waders and his jacket he grabbed his fishing pole and he had his family drive him to the stairs that led down to the water where his pontoon boat was before he walked down the steps he turned and told his family that he'd be out for about 30 to 45 minutes and that he
wanted to be picked up at the next boat ramp down the way and that he would call when he needed a ride 42 minutes later at 9 27 pm jennifer receives a phone call from her husband and she's expecting it to be the call where he says okay i'm ready to get picked up but when she answers the phone cullen is frantic and he's telling her that he's being followed by two men in the tree line that he's out on the water on his pontoon but there are two men in the tree line that he
can't see but he can hear them and they've been following him for some time and before jennifer can even get a word out cullen says to her that he's going to beach the boat and take his clothes off and then he hangs up jennifer immediately tries calling cullen back repeatedly but he's not picking up and so she's left feeling totally confused about what her husband has just told her but what stood out to her was how scared he sounded on the phone and fear was not something she typically associated with cullen this beast of a
man this tough football player he didn't get scared so for him to be that scared sounding and to be describing people basically stalking him she knew he was in serious trouble so she calls 911 and she describes where he is in the baldwin river and the police take her report and say we'll send someone out right away after jennifer got off the phone with police she called her family and told them about this really strange phone call from cullen and how she just called the police and she didn't know what to do and so her
brother tried calling cullen and cullen answered and when he did matt said hey colin where are you and cullen would say i don't know where i am but there's these two guys that are still following me and matt would say you know are you still on your boat are you on land and all cullen said is you know it's getting pretty rough out here and then he hung up afterwards matt would call jen and he would tell her about this phone call with cullen and it really didn't add any clarity to the situation and so
jen and her family decide the best thing they can do is go to the boat ramp where cullen had said he wanted to be picked up in hopes that maybe he would make his way there and they would find him so jennifer and her family head out to this location and cullen's not there they get out they're yelling for him there's no sign of him and shortly after a police car would show up because this was one of the areas where jennifer had said when she spoke to police that cullen might be and so the
police officer gets out they take an official statement from jennifer and at this point they file an official missing person report before the police began looking for cullen they reached out to his wireless service provider and they asked them to ping his cell phone from the tower any service provider has the ability to roughly triangulate the location of a cell phone based on the last few locations of the phone the last four locations that the service provider pinged for cullen were up to four miles apart from each other which was bizarre in its own way
because the idea that in a very rugged rough area in a very short amount of time that cullen had been moving four five six seven miles just to get to these different points that didn't really make sense but also when they looked at these points on a map it looked like each of them was either near a paved road or in order to get to them you would have had to cross a paved road and so they're thinking to themselves why does he keep moving point to point if at any one of these locations he's
near relative safety but as strange as these four locations were the police now had a really solid starting point so they dispatched people to each of these points and they began combing along the river where he had last been seen and within an hour they discovered his boat it was a little ways down from where he had been dropped off it was missing in ore and it was basically beached on the side of the river it wasn't clear if it had been intentionally beached but cullen wasn't in it and when they searched around the area
they couldn't find any sign that cullen was in the area they were yelling for him he wasn't yelling back interestingly a man who owned property near where the pontoon boat was found reported to police hearings screaming or yelling coming from the area where the boat was found around the same time that cullen went missing but despite this piece of information it didn't actually help them discover where cullen actually went for the next 48 hours police and hundreds of people searched in the areas where his cell phone had pinged and along the river where his pontoon
had been found but there was no sign of him then on the evening of may 28 approximately 48 hours after cullen had gone missing they discovered his body it was located less than a half mile away from a paved road and it was situated in between those four points that the cell phone provider had given he was laying completely face down with his right arm under his body and his left arm over his head clutching some grass when they rolled him over he had some blood coming out of his nose but besides that there was
no significant trauma anywhere on his body cullen appeared to be wearing all of his clothes however it was noted that the strap on his waders was really badly twisted now if he had never taken his clothes off that would have been something he would have fixed it would have been very uncomfortable when he started this trip to go fishing that would have been something he would have fixed now he said to his wife on the phone that he was going to be taking his clothes off which there was no explanation for that but he clearly
said that to his wife that she reported that to police and so some have speculated that between that phone call and finding him with the twisted strap on his waders that that indicates that perhaps his clothes did come off at some point over the past couple of days and were put back on again either by him or by someone else his cell phone had also been found in his front pocket indicating that those cell phone pings had been his actual location initially cullen's autopsy was completely inconclusive there was no trauma to his body there was
no obvious thing that killed him but later on it was determined he died of pneumonia caused by inhaling his own vomit so we don't know how you get to a place where you're inhaling your own vomit but i would imagine you're in a pretty panicked state of mind that could happen to you many people believe colin's death was the result of a traumatic brain injury caused by all the years of playing football and getting hit in the head and so that can lead to paranoia and so perhaps this was a fit of paranoia he got
turned around he got scared he thought somebody was chasing him and then you know he vomits and inhales his vomit and that ultimately kills him and in 2011 cullen had briefly shown signs of being a little bit paranoid when one day he thought someone was following him and he actually went to a family member's house and said i think someone's following me but he could never identify where this person was or who they were but even if this was a fit of paranoia and no one was following him in the woods well why didn't he
stop on the paved road every time he crossed it because that would have represented safety i mean in 2011 when he supposedly had another fit of paranoia his instincts were to go to a family member and to seek help and so you would think his instincts in this situation would be similar he would seek help he would seek safety but he continuously left safety he left the road he left his boat his boat was safety why did he leave his boat and even if we turn this around and we say no it was not a
fit of paranoia that he was in fact being followed by someone or something in the woods well then why would that prompt him to call his wife and say i'm gonna get out of the boat and take my clothes off and then proceed to walk four five six seven miles in a very short period of time crossing over a paved road at least one or two times and not stopping not signaling for help that doesn't make sense either and what was that screaming that that resident heard coming from the area where the pontoon boat was
found unfortunately there are many questions in this case and the vast majority of them will go unanswered so that's going to do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and the first one to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please give the like button a gift card to their favorite restaurant but don't put any money on it
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